Fay Godwin and Land

Fay Godwin is remembered as one of the great British landscape photographers and in late-august 1992, I did a workshop with her at Duckspool in Somerset, U.K. I do not remember much about the workshop but when I asked if I could photograph her at one point, she said that was alright but I would not have the copyright in case I wanted to use it; a valid point.

She thought my photographs, mostly of dance, were interesting in that they did not follow the normal pattern of photographs from India of portraying the poor and destitute.

One of the two books she signed for me was Forbidden Land, a book full of her beautiful photographs, that was an impassioned plea for the countryside in particular the land that has been misappropriated by landowners who block lawful public access.

The other book, Land, is full of wonderful landscape photographs by Fay with introductory text by the author John Fowles.

The text by John Fowles is interesting because he challenges the whole notion of the photographic image.

Jem Southam

http://seesawmagazine.com/southam_pages/southam_interview.html

Jem Southam has an original approach to landscape in which he sees in a more contemporary and documentary way than the more romantic approach of Ansel Adams and others.

In the 1990's I attended a workshop with him and we went to the photographic laboratories in Exeter where he was teaching (University of Plymouth) to learn colour printing from negatives. Things have changed a lot since then with the arrival of digital.

It had taken Jem time to get into using colour owing to the limitations of the medium. eventually he had found that he could create something that he liked rather than be dictated to by the chemistry. This is what we were encouraged to experiment with.

Jem had a thick book about landscape with him; it was obvious that he thought a lot about what he was doing. Conceptual art?

I id try to buy a copy of one of his books from him but he seem quite detatched from selling me one and in the end I never got around to purchasing a copy.